by Greg Barth
“If we don’t get him over this, then we don’t get him back for Pete.”
“Well, fuck Pete. That’s on him, okay? Pete went to jail. Pete got killed. That’s not on us.”
“I can’t let it go.”
“You can’t come out on top of everything.”
“What makes you think they’ll let us walk away?”
“If we don’t start walking real soon? They won’t.”
“Sounds like you’ve made up your mind already.”
“I’ve got a little place down Key West. It ain’t much. You could come with me.”
“What about Enola?”
“She’s welcome too. Or she can stay and work for Mozingo. He’ll let her keep the club probably.”
“Morgan?”
“He’ll kick up to Mozingo just like he kicked up to us.”
The entrance to the club opened. Enola had left it unlocked so Ragus and any other stragglers could leave. Crowbar stepped into the bar.
“Glad to see you guys still up,” he said.
“What brings you out this hour?” Ragus said.
“Brought something for Amanda. I know she’s been in pain. Am I interrupting?”
“You’re good,” I said.
He came to the table, pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He took one, put it between his lips, and lit it. “Hell of a day,” he said.
“We were just saying how this feels like the end,” I said.
Crowbar didn’t respond. Just nodded.
“Lost some good men today. The pilot. Morgan’s guy,” Ragus said.
“We’ll make it right,” I said.
Crowbar squinted his eyes and shook his head in confusion. “Wait. I thought you just said it was over.”
“What you guys have been doing here, in this town, your way of living—that’s what’s over,” I said. “The fight? Shit. It’s a long way from over.”
Crowbar sighed, held his hands up empty in a what-are-you-gonna-do gesture.
I poured a glass of whiskey and pushed it over to him. Crowbar took the glass, swirled the liquid, and took a long swallow. He put the glass down on the table, took a draw on his cigarette, and said, “How’s your side feeling?”
“Bad,” I said.
He picked up a paper bag from the floor and placed it on the table. “You wanna go?” he said.
I looked at the bag long and hard. I wanted it. I closed my eyes. “Can’t. Already done too much coke.” I opened my eyes wide and pointed at my dilated pupils. “See these?”
Crowbar scoffed. “Thing is, you never act all hyper and jumpy. You just stay calm and cool.”
“A lifetime of being shitfaced has taught me how to stay classy,” I said. I flashed him a crooked smile.
“What I want to know,” Ragus said in his deep voice. “Is how you still have a healthy supply?”
Crowbar parked his cigarette between his lips, took out his mobile phone, and tapped at the screen with his fingers. “Pharmaceutical suppliers. They don’t succumb to market pressure like your dope dealers do.” He put his phone back in his pocket, took a long draw on his cigarette, and crushed out the butt in the ashtray. He finished off his whiskey and pushed the bag over to me. “You need me to run you through it? Show you how everything works?”
I took the bag from him. “Not tonight. Come back and you can show me.”
“Enola won’t approve of this. You know that, right?”
“What’s she gonna do? File for divorce?”
Ragus looked over his shoulder at the front door.
“If she does, I’ve got room at my place,” Crowbar said.
“Robert Crowe, that is about the shittiest pickup line I’ve ever heard.”
“Yeah? You ain’t looked in the bag yet, girl.”
“Hang on,” Ragus said. “You guys hear that?”
“What?” I said.
“Something outside.”
Ragus stood up from the table. He took a couple steps toward the door. The large man moved with grace.
Crowbar reached around behind his back and came out with an automatic pistol. His thumb slid the safety off.
I tried not to breathe, strained to hear any sound coming from outside. My senses were coke addled and on alert. I could hear my heart hammering and the blood rushing through my ears. Then I heard a creak on the floorboards outside.
“Fuck,” I said. I covered my mouth.
Ragus held his hand back and patted the air with it. Quiet. I’ve got this.
Crowbar and I watched Ragus approach the door.
Without making a sound, Crowbar stood. He held his pistol at the ready. He took a couple of steps toward the door and extended his arm.
“Bob,” I whispered. “Let Ragus do this. Come back.” I motioned toward his chair with my hand.
Crowbar’s eyes flicked in my direction for a second. His mouth was tight, his forehead wrinkled with concentration.
Ragus put his hand out to the door.
Crowbar extended his arm, the pistol pointing just over Ragus’ shoulder at the door.
Whoever is out there is about to get one hell of a surprise.
The pistol shot was deafening—caught me completely off guard. I leaped up from the chair, my hands going over my mouth to stifle a scream. An inhuman shriek filled the air. For a moment, I wondered where that horrible sound was coming from, then I knew it came from me. I drew in a gulp of air and tried to stay quiet.
A red mist burst from the back of Ragus’ head. I saw a crimson smear on the door in front of him. Ragus dropped to the floor face first.
Crowbar stood over him and fired two more shots into the back of Ragus’ head.
My body jumped with every shot. I didn’t remember standing, but I was on my feet.
“That’s it, motherfucker,” Crowbar said. “That’s fucking it.”
I couldn’t breathe. I waved my hands up and down in a little girl manner. When I finally drew a gasping breath, I heard a coarse, shrill voice say, “Goddamn you!” Of course it was me saying those words. Tears streamed down my cheeks.
Crowbar turned to look at me. His mouth was open almost in surprise.
“Why?” I said.
He looked down at the ground and shook his head. “’Cause I don’t work for him.” He raised his eyes back up to me. “And I don’t work for you.”
“We...we’re...partners,” I said.
He stepped away from Ragus, closing the distance between us. He had the pistol pointed in my direction. “You remember that overdose you had?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“The only accident was, I didn’t give you enough.”
I gasped. “You...you...fucker!” I grabbed my cane and swung it at him. The crook of the cane cracked him good on his forehead. He drew back from reflex, but he recovered just as fast. He pointed the pistol at my head.
“Don’t make me mess up your pretty little face,” he said. “Now, sit down at the table.”
The front door to the lounge opened a crack. Whoever was opening it had to push hard to shift Ragus’ body out of the way before the door would open. I recognized the guy that stepped into the room. One of the men with Mozingo the night he confronted me out back of the bar.
I threw my cane at him. He ducked, easily missing it, and the cane flipped end over end and went out the door.
“Well, looks like I’m a little late for the party.”
“Ah, the big guy was onto me, so I had to send you a text. Haven’t been able to give the little twat her medicine yet.”
“That’s alright. I got your text just fine. I heard the shots and thought I’d stand back for a bit. See who came out on top.”
“Amanda, allow me to introduce you to my friend Deke. Deke, Amanda.”
“We’ve met,” I said.
“You’re a pretty little thing, Amanda,” Deke said.
I didn’t respond. Enola had to have heard the gunshots. There’s some soundproofing between the bar and the apartment to keep
the noise of the music from spilling upstairs, but I couldn’t imagine it stifling the pistol shots.
“Sit down,” Crowbar said.
“Fuck you. Do what you gotta do like this.”
“Deke,” Crowbar said.
“Before I do this, let me just say, I ain’t gonna take no pleasure in it.” Deke stepped forward and punched me hard in the stomach. I puked up all the bourbon I drank that night. By the time my stomach was empty and nothing was left but dry retching, the pain in my side was a burning flame.
“Now,” Crowbar said. “Sit.”
I coughed. I spat the vomit from my mouth.
I sat.
Deke came around behind me. He put his arm around my neck so my chin was in the crook of his elbow. I felt a hand against the back of my head, pushing my throat forward against the crook of his arm. I’d heard this move called The Sleeper when my father used to watch wrestling on TV.
Crowbar sat down at the table and opened the paper bag. He took out a needle, a packet of heroin, a blackened spoon with a bent handle, some water, cotton, and a rubber tourniquet. “You watch me close now, Amanda. This is the only lesson you’re ever going to get.” He reached across the table and picked up Ragus’ Zippo lighter. “Give her just a taste, Deke.”
Without saying a word, Deke flexed his arm muscles. My neck was caught between his hard forearm and bicep. He pushed against the back of my head. The flow of blood and oxygen to my brain was cut off. Deke held me like that for several seconds. I felt pinpricks break out all over my face. My field of vision was reduced to a collapsing black circle. It felt oddly pleasurable.
Deke released me. I gasped for air.
“Now, we can do this awake. Or we can do this with you unconscious. Your choice.”
I knew this was my last opportunity to say anything to Crowbar.
“Fuck you,” I said. I spat at him. I tried twisting my face around to bite Deke’s hairy arm, but he was too fast. The constrictor squeezeD around my neck resumed, only harder than before.
Everything went black.
As I was going under, I heard Crowbar say, “Too bad. She’s gonna miss last call at the fucking Suicide Lounge.”
TWENTY-SIX
Selena
DEKE DIDN’T CHOKE me to death.
I regained consciousness when he relaxed his grip on my neck. As I came out of it I was vaguely aware of what was happening to my body. I felt the prick of the needle in my arm. The pressure around my bicep loosened as the tourniquet was removed.
My vision returned like a veil being lifted from my face. Crowbar was in front of me.
“She’s back,” he said.
“Good,” Deke said.
“Yeah. It’ll look just like a lover’s quarrel. Murder suicide situation.”
I wanted to ask why go to that kind of trouble. What’s the point? But my conscious started to fade again in a different way.
“I’ll get the gas,” Deke said.
I heard his footsteps, but they sounded a thousand miles away.
The heroin coursed through my system, its numb embrace filling me from the inside out. A small part of my brain knew this was bad. The rest of my brain didn’t care.
It was my first time ever injecting heroin intravenously. I’d used opiates for a long time, mostly to take the edge off coke. But this was my first real taste of something like this. I’d like to say I was afraid, that it was a horrible experience. But that wasn’t the case. The sense of well-being I felt at that moment was unlike anything I’d experienced. My sense of self-worth skyrocketed. I felt…normal.
For the first time in my life, I felt at home.
I smelled gasoline fumes as the world faded around me. My body relaxed completely and I fell from the chair, but the floor was gentle in catching me. Someone put a pistol in my hand. My fingers were closed around it. I thought about shooting it, but the part of my mind that controlled my fingers wouldn’t engage.
I thought about the gun in my hand. I concentrated on raising it from the floor, but my body wouldn’t respond. Everything was limp.
I went into a nod. The boards in front of my eyes blurred. Popping and cracking sounds surrounded me. My eyelids lowered and the room faded to darkness. A floating sensation swept over me. Seconds passed that felt like hours. I was no longer sure where I was and I didn’t care. An intense heat enveloped me.
Someone was calling my name in the floating darkness. A familiar voice. They called to me again. I just wanted to sleep. When I considered the heat and the darkness, I wondered if Hell was an actual place.
I opened my eyes.
I was no longer in the club. There was no stage. No dance pole. No chairs.
The Nevada desert stretched out in front of me for miles.
The blazing sun overhead baked my body with relentless fury.
Someone approached. She called me Amanda. The name didn’t sound right to me. She appeared through a veil of shimmering air formed by heat radiating off the desert ground.
Then she stood before me. What a horrific sight. She was small, her skin the color of reddened bronze. She wore a buckskin skirt. Her upper body was bare. She was lean and sinewy, her breasts small with nipples the color of chestnuts. Her straight black hair fell to her shoulders and encircled her head, but the top of her head had no hair. No skin. Instead, there was what appeared to be a crimson skullcap, mottled with white and pink.
She had no face. Rather, she had no skin on her face. She looked like a blood-red skull with no eyes and no teeth. Her nose was a gaping black hole in the center.
I knew this woman.
She was Ela-Nalin, the one Choke had told me about.
She reached out her hands to me. I remembered Choke saying that the Mescalero warriors were afraid to take her hand. They feared where she might take them and that they would never emerge from their mescaline trip.
I felt no fear. I reached for her. She took both my hands in hers and lifted. I felt my back rise from the scalding desert floor. She pulled my arms hard, and my body slid along the gritty sand.
My nostrils filled with smoke and I coughed. The desert was hot enough to make the scrub brush and cactus plants smoke. She pulled me along the ground. I gave no resistance. Part of me wondered if she was taking me to Hell to be with my father. I didn’t care.
The ground grew rough and rocky under me, but I felt no pain.
A splash of cool air on my face. The fire was gone. The unforgiving sun was gone. Darkness surrounded Ela-Nalin as I looked up at her. Stars swirled about her face. Orange embers danced behind her.
She leaned down to me and pressed her hand to my neck. She touched her ear to my chest and listened to my heart. The warm smell of Lolita Lempicka washed over me. I breathed it in, not as deeply as I wanted—my lungs felt like they no longer wanted to breathe for me. I took in all of the aroma that I could. The anise, the ivy, the liquorice flower caressed my mind, letting me know I wasn’t going to Hell.
Ela-Nalin made a fist. She pressed her knuckles hard against my breastbone. Pain hit my chest in a numb, vague way.
She spoke to me. Through her gore-filled maw came the words, “Wake up.”
The pain in my chest intensified. I wanted to tell her to stop, but I couldn’t form the words.
The Mescalero girl pushed something against my nose. Something was inside my nostril, a burning sensation inside my face. Oh god, take it away. Take it away. My sinuses filled with the stench of Narcan.
“No, no, no,” I heard an intoxicated woman saying.
Ela-Nalin turned me on my side.
My body shook with convulsions. I was dry heaving.
“No, no, no,” the woman kept saying.
A needle pricked my thigh. The intranasal Narcan was bad enough, but experience told me I was also getting an injectable dose.
“Nooooooo...” the woman screamed.
Ela-Nalin looked down at me. She slapped my face hard with her hand. Through her toothless, bleeding mouth she said, “Wake up, wake
up, wake up.” Her breath smelled of perfume when she said the words.
The Narcan was unrelenting. The opiate receptors in my brain shut down one by one. Another world built itself around me brick by brick.
My heart was pounding, skipping beats.
My breath came in shallow gasps.
I was lying in the cool grass next to the club parking lot. I could feel the dew under my bare arms. My body was shaking. A fire burned nearby.
Someone was speaking to me. Enola. She held me in her arms.
I was saying the word “no” over and over.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Selena
MY HEAD THROBBED. Every part of my body was in pain. With a weak and tremulous voice I said, “You got the Naloxone prescription filled.”
“Yes,” Enola said.
“Why’d you do that?”
“Because every time I turned around I saw you going in the room with Crowbar. I knew you’d have an accident.”
I looked over at the Red Light Lounge. The lower part of the building was on fire. The flames had spread and were climbing to the upstairs apartment.
“This wasn’t an accident,” I said.
“I heard pistol shots. I came down and saw someone driving away. You were lying inside unconscious with a needle on the table. It looked like…I don’t know. Ragus was...was...”
“Enola, we have to leave. We have to get out of here now. The bodies...Ragus, and the pilot...We have to go before the fire department gets here. We won’t be able to explain this.”
“Can you stand up?”
“Let me sit here while you bring the truck around. Get my cane.”
She stood. “Okay.”
I thought of something as she walked away. “Enola.”
She turned to me.
“In Ragus’ car, get my shotgun. My purse is in there too. It’s under the passenger seat.”
She nodded and took off in a run around the corner of the building.
The rebound effect of a strong opiate is truly a bitch, and I don’t mean one of those cute little bitches. I’m talking about a bitch with hair on her arms. Too much Narcan only makes coming down worse. You go from being nice and high to plunged face first into full blown withdrawal in a matter of seconds.
